You couldn't make it up, part DCXLI

Take a look at this story on the BBC news website regarding "no god" slogans appearing on London buses - an interesting and thought-provoking story in its own right. In particular, note how, two thirds of the way through the article, Stephen Green of pressure group Christian Voice is quoted as saying, "People don't like being preached at."

Is it just me that finds this funny?

Geocities and adverts

I, like a lot of people around the world, use Geocities as the free host for this website. Geocities are okay, they're very stable, with excellent uptime, and the provision (15MB of space, 3GB/mth bandwidth) is plenty for me thus far. And like I said, it's free, right? So what's the problem? Look to the right... that sodding ad bar down the side of the page. Sure, you can collapse it with the little arrow at the top but as soon as you move to another page within the site, it re-opens.

Now there are lots of purported solutions to this on the Internet but, take it from me, they're all crap. Some do indeed dispense with the ad bar... but then Geocities' clever script falls back to adding the old ad square instead, which is no better. Other so-called solutions are nothing better than half-arsed hacks of your browser window's history, so whilst the ad bar disappears your browser's 'Back' button is hijacked and meddled with. Not so good. Besides, as a responsible Geocities user I am forbidden from doing anything with my site that would prevent the ad bar from showing, not only by my conscience but also by their T's and C's.

I can help you though, and not just to view this site as I intended it, but also to do away with the ad bar on every free Geocities site that you ever visit. Interested? Here's how you do it.

For Internet Explorer, download and install IE7Pro. For Firefox users, download and install Adblock Plus. For Opera users, well, from version 9.5 onwards you've got an integrated ad blocker. Anyway, whichever browser (and blocker) you're using, you need to manually add block filters for http://us.geocities.com/js_source and http://www.geocities.com/js_source - by blacklisting these URLs you'll put the kibosh on the Geocities ad bar. Hooray!

Obviously Geocities are only able to offer the likes of me free web space by forcing ad's on visitors to my site, so clearly I in no way advocate or endorse any such ad blockers. This post is purely for educational purposes...

Andy Burnham for PM!

In the October issue of Q Magazine Andy Burnham, Labour's Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, is quoted as saying "I would trade in the whole political career tomorrow if I could join The Wedding Present." Now whatever you think of his politics, you have to admire that...

Education for leisure

I've just finished reading the story of how the AQA exam board is removing a poem "about a knife-carrying violent loner" from its anthology for GCSE English because of fears over teenage knife crime. All well and good, you might think. The poem in question is Education for Leisure written by Carol Ann Duffy. What's more, AQA has advised schools to destroy all copies of the anthology (why not have a ritual book burning, it's been done before, right?) - generous to the last, the exam board says it will send replacements not containing the offending poem.

So why all the fuss? Yes, the poem begins with the line: "Today I am going to kill something. Anything." But it is surely anti-violence, anti-knife crime, and, in my view, about as far from glamourising it as can be. Surely there is value in getting people of GCSE age to think about the issues and thought processes that lead to crime of this nature? Surely there is value in encouraging people to think twice about this issue?

The BBC article does not reproduce the poem in full, so I will, here. Read it, and have a think - then make your own mind up. Are AQA doing the right thing? Or pandering to ill-conceived, knee-jerk panic?

Education for Leisure by Carol Ann Duffy

Today I am going to kill something. Anything.
I have had enough of being ignored and today
I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day,
a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets

I squash a fly against the window with my thumb.
we did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in
another language and now the fly is in another language.
I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.

I am a genius. I could be anything at all, with half
the chance. But today I am going to change the world.
something's world. The cat avoids me. The cat
knows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.

I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain.
I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking.
Once a fortnight, I walk the two miles into town
For signing on. They don't appreciate my autograph.

There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio
and tell the man he's talking to a superstar.
he cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.
the pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.

Don't win a little, win a lotto... (or don't win at all)

Just so you know, if I suddenly disappear from the face of the Internet, I haven't been hit by a bus (well, conceivably I might have, but let's hope not). Rather more optimistically, maybe I'll have won the National Lottery, since I'm just starting up a syndicate with some colleagues at work. Now in reality our chances of winning more than the occasional tenner are slim - by my reckoning, the odds of landing the jackpot prize are 1 in 13,983,816... so, with fourteen people in our syndicate, I guess you could say we have a one in a million chance each week. No wonder some people call lotteries a tax on the innumerate...

...but of course I'm not innumerate - I'm just choosing to subscribe to the view that you've got to be in it to win it... wish me luck!

The Headmaster Ritual

I know I said I'd try to write about music less, but when I stumbled upon this curio of Radiohead covering The Smiths, what could I do but share it with you?

Happy birthday Joe

Today would have been Joe Strummer's birthday. Vocalist, guitarist and founding member of The Clash, Joe made some great music that has stood the test of time - if you can find a copy on YouTube (I couldn't, amazingly) witness how contemporary both the song and video for Should I Stay Or Should I Go? still feel. Not only that, here was a man with strong social and political principles, with The Clash being very much involved in the early days of the Rock Against Racism initiative. Unbelievably, it's more than five years since Joe died - doesn't time fly?

Anyway, enough potted history - more music, I hear you cry! The Clash are a band I have come to enjoy more the older I get and if you don't already own a copy of Give 'Em Enough Rope and London Calling, why not?! Are you unwell?! At least treat yourself to a copy of The Story Of The Clash or, for today's attention-deficit generation, Singles. In the meantime, in honour of what would have been Joe's 56th birthday, let me direct you to an MP3 of probably my favourite Clash song, Stay Free. Enjoy.

P-p-p-pick up a... Colonel-in-Chief

The latest in a long line of "you couldn't make it up" type stories. Brilliant.

Art for art's sake

Every so often, the debate about the merits, or otherwise, of modern art kicks off, as in this intelligent piece by Katherine Whitehorn. Currently, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art is showing a 20-year retrospective of the always-interesting Tracey Emin which has, predictably, thrown up the usual suspects, moaning and wailing that "it's just an unmade bed". Now I can't make it to Emin's show in Edinburgh but I have just been to the Royal Academy of Art's summer show, which includes a room curated by Emin (which carries an 18 certificate, amusingly), and I can say that her room was the most thought-provoking, and not just for the zebra mounting a women or the naked woman hula-hooping with barbed wire (although that was strangely hypnotic). We followed Sunday's trip to the Royal Academy with another trip to the Hayward Gallery to see more modern art in the form of their Psycho Buildings show... which was fantastic, visually stunning and so easy to become immersed in. I can't recommend it enough, so hurry, it's only on until the end of the month (and whilst you're there, why not nip into the Saison Poetry Library too?). I bet you don't have as lovely a meal as we had afterwards though (and I'm not going to tell you where we ate because if the secret gets out, and it gets over-crowded, well, it'll be ruined...)

One stock response of many people when faced with modern art is "I don't call that art!" Well okay then, what do you call art? If you consider art appreciation in terms of the effect a piece has, its context, techniques used and its intended meaning, then surely anything that puts a tick against some, or all, of those boxes could be considered art? Okay, so the effect it has on you might be to make you turn your nose up or scoff, but it's still an effect...

The other standard reaction to modern art is "I could do that." Fine. But the fact is, you haven't. You haven't had the idea. The creative spark has not twitched and flickered within you, has not caught alight. When it comes to modern art it seems that those that can, do, and those that can't criticise.

My mini city

So many otherwise interesting websites require you to register, or create an account, or download software, or all of the above, before you can do anything with them. This is a pain, at times, so it makes a nice change to find a entertainingly time-wasting website that doesn't. It's called My Mini City and guess what - it let's you create your own virtual city, and then watch it grow. All you have to do is pick a country for your city to be in, and then give it a name, and that's it - there's no registration, no need to divulge untold personal details to create an account, no need to download bloated client software, nothing.

So you're probably wondering how it works then? How you can make your city grow? Simple. When you create your city, a unique URL for it is created, and it is by that address receiving hits that your city grows. So, to visit my city, which currently resembles an isolated hut in the middle of a vast empty expanse, and has a population of 1 (but a 0% crime rate!) all you have to do is click margueritton.myminicity.com... so please do! And in case you're wondering how I came by the name "Margueritton", all I can say is that the -ton suffix implies town, whilst marguerite is French...